My Fair Lady

04.02.13

Audrey Hepburn Wished For Smaller Nose, Bigger Chest

The iconic actress called herself a "good mixture of defects."

She was the epitome of classic Hollywood beauty--gamine, doe-eyed, impossibly slender--and yet Audrey Hepburn apparently had body issues like the rest of us. So says her son Luca Dotti, the offspring of her 13-year marriage with Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti. Luca--who is working on a new book, Audrey in Rome--told Vanity Fair that his mother thought of herself as a "good mixture of defects": "She thought she had a big nose and big feet, and she was too skinny and not enough breast. She would look in the mirror and say, 'I don't understand why people see me as beautiful.'"

Luca also ruminated on his parents' marital strife ("My father was 10 years younger. To be around a woman who has been an icon for many years, and you're a young doctor, for a man it makes a difference. If the equation was reversed...it would have probably worked out better") and Hepburn's signature big-sunglasses-and-a-scarf style.

While the actress may have been dissatisfied with certain aspects of her appearance, her son--and the world--saw something ethereal: of the 2500 photos of his mother in Italy, he said, "even in these candid shots she was always herself--perfect."